


rice and nori and salt and brother

by flooruh



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Relationship Study, happy late bday to the twins n also happy osamutober, it is physically impossible for me to write a fic and not have it be a character/relationship study, loosely based on the waitress musical but specifically the song what baking can do, written in lowercase jsyk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26973457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flooruh/pseuds/flooruh
Summary: osamu realizes two things as he watches atsumu board a train to tokyo by himself.one; this is the first time the miya twins have ever been separated more than a classroom-length distance apart from one another. two; this is not going to be the last time.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu
Comments: 22
Kudos: 88





	rice and nori and salt and brother

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaa i tried so hard to have this done on their birthday but obviously,,, that did not happen ;(  
> but at least i got it done !!! that is something !!!
> 
> the title is my own variation of the “sugar, butter, flour” repeating lyric from the waitress musical ! there’s this part in the first song that goes “sugar and butter and flour and mother” and i was like omg,,, miya twins onigiri version with brother instead of mother,,, my big brain,,,

_i. rice_

osamu realizes two things as he watches atsumu board a train to tokyo by himself.

one; this is the first time the miya twins have ever been separated more than a classroom-length distance apart from one another. two; this is not going to be the last time.

the realization is as jolting as taking a bite of cake and realizing he used salt instead of sugar. it’s the kind of belated understanding that makes him feel stupid and naive. how did you mix up the salt and the sugar, osamu? did you really think you and atsumu were going to be attached at the hip for the rest of your lives, osamu? how adorable of you, how _foolish_.

osamu’s known for a while now that he doesn’t love volleyball as much as atsumu. but it’s only now, as atsumu’s train slowly leaves the station, that he fully understands what that means: he doesn’t want to be on that train with his brother. he doesn’t want to go to the all-japan youth intensive training camp. all he really wants to do is go home and cook dinner and actually get to eat some of it before atsumu comes back and shoves everything into that black hole he calls a mouth. he wants to finally try out that new salmon recipe he never could before because atsumu insists on eating nothing but tuna.

he wants to quit volleyball.

  
  
  
  


_ii. nori_

the issue with quitting volleyball, however, is that he loves it.

the sweat dripping down his chin, the sting on the palm of his hand, the echo of the ball as it slams into the ground, the roar of the crowd, the rush of adrenaline, the look atsumu shares with him when they pull off a quick attack — nothing compares to that wondrous mix of sensations. nothing but volleyball can offer him that impossible combination of pride and anxiety and pure, unadulterated joy. nothing compares to the love he has for volleyball.

but osamu has other loves too, ones that are just as true.

cooking is not like volleyball. volleyball is, first and foremost, an activity done with others. without a team, without a partner, without _atsumu_ , it’s pointless. the camaraderie you share with your teammates, the competition between you and the other team, the knowledge of thousands of strangers watching you, cheering for you, _connecting_ with you — that kind of familiarity is something cooking could never emulate.

but, at the same time, there’s a unique kind of connection that only food can offer. the kitchen is such a striking contrast to the court. on the court, everything — pride, pain, pleasure — is out in the open, for everyone and anyone to witness. in the kitchen, it’s just you and the food. osamu thinks it’s amazing, how chefs can reveal so much about themselves within one dish. his mom’s omurice is never just omurice; it’s her love, objectified in a combination of rice and eggs and a clumsy heart drawn in ketchup. the soba at the shop near their school is never just soba; it’s the chef’s devotion, evident in the texture and flavor of the buckwheat noodles, textures and flavors that are impossible to get from store-bought, mass-manufactured noodles. the onigiri osamu makes after a fight with atsumu is never just onigiri; it’s a peace offering, because there is no other explanation for why osamu would fill them with tuna when he prefers salmon himself.

osamu has many loves, but there was only ever one that made him want to chase after it forever.

but the issue with becoming a chef is that love has nothing to do with it.

you can love something, but that doesn’t make you good at it. and osamu knows you don’t have to be good at it to do it, but he’s a miya, and miyas don’t do things half-assed. osamu _wants_ to be good at it, wants to be the very best chef the world has ever seen, wants to have michelin stars and _ONIGIRI MIYA_ on critics’ top one-hundred lists. he wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything; he wants it more than he wants to play volleyball at his brother’s side.

but there’s that tiny voice in the back of his head that reminds him _what if_. osamu knows the statistics, knows how hard it is to run a restaurant, much less a successful one. he knows the food industry is as fickle as the sports industry, but the difference is that while he _knows_ he’s good at volleyball, good enough to go pro, he doesn’t know if he’s good enough at cooking to make it a career. he loves it, he thinks his food tastes good, but is he _good_ at it? or would he be giving up a successful career doing something he loves for an uncertain future doing something he loves just a little bit more?

does he settle or does he dream?

he pulls off karasuno’s freak quick with atsumu and for a moment osamu thinks that he can do this for the rest of his life. then inarizaki loses in their first match and atsumu looks hungrier than osamu has ever seen him and osamu realizes.

miyas dream.

  
  
  
  


_iii. salt_

he tells atsumu the day after the spring interhigh ends, when they’re walking home from school. which is to say, he tells atsumu at the worst possible time.

in his defense, osamu didn’t _mean_ to tell him. in all honesty, osamu was hoping he never had to tell him, because no amount of planning and preparation would ever actually prepare him for the headache of a fight atsumu would put up once he finds out. but atsumu does find out, because he goes on and on about how the miya twins are going to dominate nationals next year, then japan, then the world, and osamu feels so guilty that he thinks he’s going to throw up, which would be such a waste of the expensive sushi the team was treated to last night.

atsumu does not react as expected.

osamu expects a lecture, some denial, maybe even a punch in the face. what he is not prepared for is for atsumu to stop walking, look at him like it’s the end of the world, and say in the smallest voice he has ever heard come out of his brother’s mouth, “what?”

something terrible bubbles up in osamu’s chest and vice grips his heart. immediately, he wants to take it back, pass it off as a joke, tell atsumu that _yeah tsumu, it’s us against the world_. but he can’t, because osamu, like atsumu, is selfish at heart.

“i’m quittin’ volleyball after high school.”

“why?”

osamu fidgets. he definitely shouldn’t have brought this up right now, especially not in public. he thinks a subconscious part of him thought that atsumu would refrain from violently throttling him if they were in public, but that’s backfired on him. instead, atsumu is still rooted in the middle of the sidewalk, paying no mind to the people trying to get around him. he’s staring at osamu like he’s never seen him before in his life, as though they’re long-lost twins who bumped into each other on the street.

maybe they are. this version of atsumu is someone osamu has never known.

“why,” atsumu repeats, and this time it’s not a question, but a demand. osamu’s mood immediately worsens. he hates when atsumu invokes his seniority, as if being born two minutes earlier really makes that much of a difference. as if he left with his own free will and osamu hadn’t forcibly removed him because his big head was in the way.

“‘cause i wanna be a chef,” osamu forces himself to look atsumu in the eye and say it in the clearest voice he can manage. and once he says it, he knows. he knows it’s not a mistake, that tiny voice in the back of his head be damned. it feels so, _so_ good to say it out loud.

then atsumu shatters all his confidence with one blow. “do ya honestly think yer gonna make it as a chef?” atsumu says it like he knows all the secrets of the universe and the juiciest one is that miya osamu does not become a chef, or a professional volleyball player, but a complete and utter failure, doomed to a life in atsumu’s shadow. he says it as if that’s how it is now, as if atsumu is miles ahead of him and osamu is constantly chasing after him. it makes osamu angry, angrier than he has ever been before.

for the first time in their lives, osamu can’t read atsumu. he can’t tell if atsumu said it because he genuinely doesn’t think osamu will succeed or if he knew that was the one thing he could say that would hurt osamu the most. osamu doesn’t know which would be worse. he doesn’t want to think about it. it takes all of osamu’s self-control to not explode. “yer not better than me.”

atsumu’s expression morphs into one of confusion. “what are ya talking about? when did i say that? not that it’s not true, but—”

“don’t fuckin’ look at me like that then, tsumu.”

“i don’t know what ya mean,” atsumu says, and osamu finally understands what it’s like for other people. he’s always thought that twin telepathy was bullshit, but he could never deny that he and atsumu had a way of _knowing_ one another, a form of talking that went beyond mere verbal communication. he finally gets it, that frustration others feel when they aren’t being understood.

he hates it.

he doesn’t know how to explain to atsumu how he feels. he doesn’t know if there are even enough words to describe how much he loves volleyball, how much he loves food, how _badly_ he wants to play at his brother’s side forever and how _horribly_ it would kill him to actually do that. 

osamu doesn’t know how to say any of that, so he doesn't say anything at all. he simply turns around and storms back home.

it’s in that moment that osamu wishes they weren’t twins. maybe then he could dramatically stomp off without atsumu being forced to follow him back home. maybe then he would have his own room, with his own door to slam in atsumu’s face, one that atsumu can’t just open and waltz through like he pays the damn bills. maybe then osamu can have a single moment to himself, just one, just for a second. 

he shucks off his backpack and burrows into his covers, trying to ignore atsumu and failing, because if it were as easy as simply ignoring atsumu, they would never have any problems in the first place. 

osamu glares at the bottom of the top bunk and curses his brother with every word he knows. _i’ll make ya eat yer words, tsumu. it’ll be the best fuckin’ meal ya ever had._

if he can’t tell atsumu what he means, then he’ll just have to show him.

  
  
  
  


_iv. brother_

they don’t talk for four days.

osamu spends the four days holed up in the kitchen, making enough rice to feed the entire nation of japan and using so many different kinds of ingredients that he’s surprised the nearby stores even have anything left in stock. his mom has already come in twice to tell him to stop, there’s no way anyone can eat that much onigiri, and you better be paying for all that yourself, osamu. but osamu’s not trying to make just any plain old onigiri, osamu’s going to make the best onigiri atsumu will ever have, one that would make it impossible for him to look at osamu as though they are anything but equals.

he’s tried every filling possible. umeboshi, okaka, kombu, even venturing into non-japanese recipes, and once, when he was feeling particularly ambitious (or perhaps desperate is the better word), chocolate — he would really rather not talk about it. he’s tried salting his rice with salts he’s never used before and frying the rice before he molds it. in one attempt he poured half a bottle of sriracha into both the rice _and_ the filling and oh god, oh man, that was a mistake. he feels like he’s attempted every single possible flavor combination and he thinks most of them have come out tasting pretty decent — or, at the very least, edible — but none of them are exactly what he’s looking for. it’s not until what is probably his twentieth attempt that he realizes what he truly wants.

he wants his onigiri to be simple. he doesn’t want it to taste like it was made with ingredients you would have to sell your soul to be able to afford. he wants it to taste like an onigiri anyone can make, but one that is impossible to truly replicate. he wants it to taste like it’s filled with unconditional love and extreme care, like mornings spent racing through the hills of hyogo, of afternoons spent standing on the court, of late nights spent chattering in hushed voices. he wants it to taste of tosses and spikes, of high fives and side bumps. he wants it to taste like a lifetime spent together.

osamu suddenly realizes why atsumu was so upset with him for quitting volleyball.

osamu stops trying to impress. he goes back to the basics, back to what he knows, rice and nori and salt. he makes a new pot of rice, the brand his family always uses, washing it once, twice, three times before putting just the right amount of water to get the fluffiest texture. he carefully cuts out the nori and sets a bowl of salt aside for later. then he turns to his filling, and he’s so stupid for thinking it could have been anything but tuna. he minces it, seasoning it with an appropriate amount of mayo and some finely chopped spring onions from his mom’s garden, a quiet thank you to her for introducing him to the power of a delicious home-cooked meal. then he throws it all together, sprinkling the salt on his hands and grabbing a handful of soft, fluffy rice, placing a delicate blob of tuna in the middle and forming it into a tiny, perfect ball, safely wrapped in a strip of nori.

osamu sets it down and adds a few garnishes. he stares at it. he can’t believe atsumu is the one who gets to eat this. osamu is so jealous.

“here.” osamu sets down his life’s work in front of atsumu, who yelps and flings backwards in his chair, as if osamu had just set down a bomb in front of him and not the best damn looking onigiri anyone has ever made.

“jeez, you scared the shit out of me.” atsumu eyes the onigiri apprehensively, then gives osamu the same look. “what is that?”

“what the hell do ya mean? what does it look like?”

atsumu leans forward to look at it, grimaces, and leans back again. osamu wants to sock him in the face. “it ain’t poisoned?”

“i wouldn’t do that to the food.”

“to the food,” atsumu parrots, sending him an unimpressed look. “but you would poison _me_.”

“no. if i wanted to kill ya i would just strangle ya. now eat the damn thing before i actually go through with it.”

atsumu stares at him for a second longer before he picks it up and gives it a dramatic sniff. “it smells good.” he finally says.

osamu snorts. “just _good_?” atsumu looks like he’s about to start openly drooling.

atsumu opts to ignore him and takes a big bite out of the onigiri. immediately, his eyes go as wide as saucers, the corners of his mouth quirking up. he looks like he just won an entire set with 25 service aces in a row. seeing _his_ food make atsumu look the way he does when he plays volleyball makes osamu feel like he’s standing on top of the world, right alongside him.

“holy shit samu! this is _sooooo_ good.” atsumu takes another bite. he says something else that sounds vaguely like _how the hell did ya make this_ , though osamu doesn’t know for sure since his brother is a heathen who can’t chew with his mouth closed. it’s a little gross, but it still makes him smile to see someone — no, not someone, not just anyone, but _atsumu_ — enjoy his food.

“tsumu.”

“hm?”

“i’m not gonna miss a single one of yer games.”

atsumu stops chewing. he sets the onigiri down and gives him a funny look, opening and closing his mouth so many times that osamu starts to lose his patience. finally he seems to settle on something. “i don’t think i’m better than ya, samu.” osamu barely has time to blink in surprise before atsumu starts talking a mile a minute. “not yet, anyway. and yer not better than me. i will be though — better, i mean. one day, i’m gonna set for the greatest spikers ya ever seen, and yer gonna be sitting in yer fancy little shop, jealous that yer not one of ‘em. and when i win the gold medal for japan, yer gonna be begging me to eat at _osamugiri_.”

there’s so much to unpack in what atsumu just said but all osamu can focus on is, “osamugiri?”

“that’s yer restaurant name. it’s _osamu_ and _onigiri_ combined.”

“no, i got that. that’s,” osamu considers. “that’s the worst fuckin’ name i’ve ever heard.”

“huh??!!? well what else would ya name it?”

“i was thinking _onigiri miya_.”

“oh.” atsumu taps a finger against his chin, like he’s one breakthrough away from busting this case wide open. “hmmmmm, i guess that ain’t so bad. makes sense that you would wanna use the family name once i’m rich and famous. if people know yer my bro, then you would get more business.”

“tsumu.”

“hm?”

“do ya _want_ me to strangle you?”

atsumu holds his hands up in mock surrender. “i’m kiddin’, i’m kiddin’! ya know i am! ya know they wouldn’t just be comin’ to onigiri miya for me! they’d be comin’ ‘cause they’d be stupid not to.”

“shut up.” osamu says, but there’s a grin on his face and no bite to his words. “besides, yer not wrong.”

“huh?”

“they would kinda be comin’ for you. i’m gonna make this,” osamu gestures to the half-eaten onigiri still sitting on the plate in front of them. “the tsumu special.”

atsumu looks at him like osamu really did just kill him. osamu smiles in response, something soft and warm, and atsumu shoves him away and tells him to snap out of it. it only makes osamu grin a little more.

they’ll be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was. brutal to write,,, i just could not properly form the words i needed to form but i wanted to do an osamu waitress concept fic so bad so i hope i was still able to do it justice,,,


End file.
